Wolves of the Calla (93 page)

“If you’d found him, Slightman—if you’d found
my
boy—would you have killed him?”

Slightman put his spectacles back on as he struggled with it. Roland couldn’t tell if he understood the importance of the question or not. He waited to see if the father of Jake’s friend would live or die. He’d have to decide quickly; they were approaching
the place where the waggons would stop and the children would get down.

The man at last raised his head and met Roland’s eyes again. He opened his mouth to speak and couldn’t. The fact of the matter was clear enough: he could answer the gunslinger’s question, or he could look into the gunslinger’s face, but he could not do both at the same time.

Dropping his gaze back to the splintery wood between his feet, Slightman said: “Yes, I reckon we would have killed him.” A pause. A nod. When he moved his head a tear fell from one eye and splashed on the wood of the peak-seat’s floor. “Yar, what else?” Now he looked up; now he could meet Roland’s eyes again, and when he did he saw his fate had been decided. “Make it quick,” said he, “and don’t let me boy see it happen. Beg ya please.”

Roland flapped the reins over the mules’ backs again. Then he said: “I won’t be the one to stop your miserable breath.”

Slightman’s breath
did
stop. Telling the gunslinger that yes, he would have killed a twelve-year-old boy to protect his secret, his face had had a kind of strained nobility. Now it wore hope instead, and hope made it ugly. Nearly grotesque. Then he let his breath out in a ragged sigh and said, “You’re fooling with me. A-teasing me. You’re going to kill me, all right. Why would you not?”

“A coward judges all he sees by what he is,” Roland remarked. “I’d not kill you unless I had to, Slightman, because I love my own boy. You must understand that much, don’t you? To love a boy?”

“Yar.” Slightman lowered his head again and began to rub the back of his sunburned neck. The
neck he must have thought would end this day packed in dirt.

“But you have to understand something. For your own good and Benny’s as much as ours. If the Wolves win, you
will
die. That much you can be sure of. ‘Take it to the bank,’ Eddie and Susannah say.”

Slightman was looking at him again, eyes narrowed behind his specs.

“Hear me well, Slightman, and take understanding from what I say. We’re not going to be where the Wolves think we’re going to be, and neither are the kiddies. Win or lose, this time they’re going to leave some bodies behind. And win or lose, they’ll know they were misled. Who was there in Calla Bryn Sturgis to mislead them? Only two. Andy and Ben Slightman. Andy’s shut down, gone beyond the reach of their vengeance.” He gave Slightman a smile that was as cold as the earth’s north end. “But you’re not. Nor the only one you care for in your poor excuse for a heart.”

Slightman sat considering this. It was clearly a new idea to him, but once he saw the logic of it, it was undeniable.

“They’ll likely think you switched sides a-purpose,” Roland said, “but even if you could convince them it was an accident, they’d kill you just the same. And your son, as well. For vengeance.”

A red stain had seeped into the man’s cheeks as the gunslinger spoke—roses of shame, Roland supposed—but as he considered the probability of his son’s murder at the hands of the Wolves, he grew white once more. Or perhaps it was the thought of Benny being taken east that did it—being taken
east and roont. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Sorry for what I’ve done.”

“Balls to your sorry,” Roland said. “Ka works and the world moves on.”

Slightman made no reply.

“I’m disposed to send you with the kids, just as I said I would,” Roland told him. “If things go as I hope, you won’t see a single moment’s action. If things don’t go as I hope, you want to remember Sarey Adams is boss of that shooting match, and if I talk to her after, you want to hope that she says you did everything you were told to do.” When this met with only more silence from Slightman, the gunslinger spoke sharply. “Tell me you understand, gods damn you. I want to hear ‘Yes, Roland, I ken.’ ”

“Yes, Roland, I ken very well.” There was a pause. “If we
do
win, will the
folken
find out, do’ee reckon? Find out about . . . me?”

“Not from Andy, they won’t,” Roland said. “His blabber’s done. And not from me, if you do as you now promise. Not from my ka-tet, either. Not out of respect for you, but out of respect for Jake Chambers. And if the Wolves fall into the trap I’ve laid them, why would the
folken
ever suspect another traitor?” He measured Slightman with his cool eyes. “They’re innocent folk. Trusting. As ye know. Certainly ye used it.”

The flush came back. Slightman looked down at the floor of the peak-seat again. Roland looked up and saw the place he was looking for now less than a quarter of a mile ahead. Good. There was still no dust-cloud on the eastern horizon, but he could feel it gathering in his mind. The Wolves were coming,
oh yes. Somewhere across the river they had dismounted their train and mounted their horses and were riding like hell. And from it, he had no doubt.

“I did it for my son,” Slightman said. “Andy came to me and said they would surely take him. Somewhere over there, Roland—” He pointed east, toward Thunderclap. “Somewhere over there are poor creatures called Breakers. Prisoners. Andy says they’re telepaths and psychokinetics, and although I ken neither word, I know they’re to do with the mind. The Breakers are human, and they eat what we eat to nourish their bodies, but they need other food,
special
food, to nourish whatever it is that makes
them
special.”

“Brain-food,” Roland said. He remembered that his mother had called fish brain-food. And then, for no reason he could tell, he found himself thinking of Susannah’s nocturnal prowls. Only it wasn’t Susannah who visited that midnight banquet hall; it was Mia. Daughter of none.

“Yar, I reckon,” Slightman agreed. “Anyway, it’s something only twins have, something that links them mind-to-mind. And these fellows—not the Wolves, but they who send the Wolves—take it out. When it’s gone, the kids’re idiots. Roont. It’s
food,
Roland, do ya kennit?
That’s
why they take em! To feed their goddamned
Breakers
! Not their bellies or their bodies, but their minds! And I don’t even know what it is they’ve been set to break!”

“The two Beams that still hold the Tower,” Roland said.

Slightman was thunderstruck. And fearful. “The
Dark Tower?” He whispered the words. “Do ya say so?”

“I do,” Roland said. “Who’s Finli? Finli o’ Tego.”

“I don’t know. A voice that takes my reports, is all. A taheen, I think—do you know what that is?”

“Do you?”

Slightman shook his head.

“Then we’ll leave it. Mayhap I’ll meet him in time and he’ll answer to hand for this business.”

Slightman did not reply, but Roland sensed his doubt. That was all right. They’d almost made it now, and the gunslinger felt an invisible band which had been cinched about his middle begin to loosen. He turned fully to the foreman for the first time. “There’s always been someone like you for Andy to cozen, Slightman; I have no doubt it’s mostly what he was left here for, just as I have no doubt that your daughter, Benny’s sister, didn’t die an accidental death. They always need one left-over twin, and one weak parent.”

“You can’t—”

“Shut up. You’ve said all that’s good for you.”

Slightman sat silent beside Roland on the seat.

“I understand betrayal. I’ve done my share of it, once to Jake himself. But that doesn’t change what you are; let’s have that straight. You’re a carrion-bird. A rustie turned vulture.”

The color was back in Slightman’s cheeks, turning them the shade of claret. “I did what I did for my boy,” he said stubbornly.

Roland spat into his cupped hand, then raised the hand and caressed Slightman’s cheek with it. The cheek was currently full of blood, and hot to the touch. Then the gunslinger took hold of the
spectacles Slightman wore and jiggled them slightly on the man’s nose. “Won’t wash,” he said, very quietly. “Because of these. This is how they mark you, Slightman. This is your brand. You tell yourself you did it for your boy because it gets you to sleep at night.
I
tell
myself
that what I did to Jake I did so as not to lose my chance at the Tower . . . and that gets
me
to sleep at night. The difference between us, the
only
difference, is that I never took a pair of spectacles.” He wiped his hand on his pants. “You sold out, Slightman. And you have forgotten the face of your father.”

“Let me be,” Slightman whispered. He wiped the slick of the gunslinger’s spittle from his cheek. It was replaced by his own tears. “For my boy’s sake.”

Roland nodded. “That’s all this is, for your boy’s sake. You drag him behind you like a dead chicken. Well, never mind. If all goes as I hope, you may live your life with him in the Calla, and grow old in the regard of your neighbors. You’ll be one of those who stood up to the Wolves when the gunslingers came to town along the Path of the Beam. When you can’t walk, he’ll walk with you and hold you up. I see this, but I don’t like what I see. Because a man who’ll sell his soul for a pair of spectacles will resell it for some other prink-a-dee—even cheaper—and sooner or later your boy will find out what you are, anyway. The best thing that could happen to your son today is for you to die a hero.” And then, before Slightman could reply, Roland raised his voice and shouted. “Hey, Overholser! Ho, the waggon!
Overholser!
Pull on over! We’re here! Say thankya!”

“Roland—” Slightman began.

“No,” Roland said, tying off the reins. “Palaver’s done. Just remember what I said, sai: if you get a chance to die a hero today, do your son a favor and take it.”

At first everything went according to plan and they called it ka. When things began going wrong and the dying started, they called that ka, too. Ka, the gunslinger could have told them, was often the last thing you had to rise above.

Roland had explained to the children what he wanted of them while still on the common, under the flaring torches. Now, with daylight brightening (but the sun still waiting in the wings), they took their places perfectly, lining up in the road from oldest to youngest, each pair of twins holding hands. The buckas were parked on the left side of the road, their offside wheels just above the ditch. The only gap was where the track into the arroyo country split off from East Road. Standing beside the children in a stretched line were the minders, their number now swelled to well over a dozen with the addition of Tian, Pere Callahan, Slightman, and Wayne Overholser. Across from them, positioned in a line above the righthand ditch, were Eddie, Susannah, Rosa, Margaret Eisenhart, and Tian’s wife, Zalia. Each of the women wore a silk-lined reed sack filled with plates. Stacked in the ditch below and behind them
were boxes containing more Orizas. There were two hundred plates in all.

Eddie glanced across the river. Still no dust. Susannah gave him a nervous smile, which he returned in kind. This was the hard part—the scary part. Later, he knew, the red fog would wrap him up and carry him away. Now he was too aware. What he was aware of most was that right now they were as helpless and vulnerable as a turtle without its shell.

Jake came hustling up the line of children, carrying the box of collected odds and ends: hair ribbons, a teething infant’s comfort-chewy, a whistle whittled from a yew-stick, an old shoe with most of the sole gone, a mateless sock. There were perhaps two dozen similar items.

“Benny Slightman!” Roland barked. “Frank Tavery! Francine Tavery! To me!”

“Here, now!” Benny Slightman’s father said, immediately alarmed. “What’re you calling my son out of line f—”

“To do his duty, just as you’ll do yours,” Roland said. “Not another word.”

The four children he had called appeared before him. The Taverys were flushed and out of breath, eyes shining, still holding hands.

“Listen, now, and make me repeat not a single word,” Roland said. Benny and the Taverys leaned forward anxiously. Although clearly impatient to be off, Jake was less anxious; he knew this part, and most of what would follow. What Roland
hoped
would follow.

Roland spoke to the children, but loud enough for the strung-out line of child-minders to hear, too. “You’re to go up the path,” he said, “and every few
feet you leave something, as if ’twere dropped on a hard, fast march. And I expect
you
four to make a hard, fast march. Don’t run, but just below it. Mind your footing. Go to where the path branches—that’s half a mile—and no farther. D’you ken?
Not one step farther.
”

They nodded eagerly. Roland switched his gaze to the adults standing tensely behind them.

“These four get a two-minute start. Then the rest of the twins go, oldest first, youngest last. They won’t be going far; the last pairs will hardly get off the road.” Roland raised his voice to a commanding shout.
“Children! When you hear this, come back! Come to me a-hurry!”
Roland put the first two fingers of his left hand into the corners of his mouth and blew a whistle so piercing that several children put their hands to their ears.

Annabelle Javier said, “Sai, if you mean for the children to hide in one of the caves, why would you call them back?”

“Because they’re not going into the caves,” Roland said. “They’re going down there.” He pointed east. “Lady Oriza is going to take care of the children. They’re going to hide in the rice, just this side of the river.” They all looked where he pointed, and so it was they all saw the dust at the same time.

The Wolves were coming.

“Our company’s on the way, sugarpie,” Susannah said.

Roland nodded, then turned to Jake. “Go on, Jake. Just as I say.”

Jake pulled a double handful of stuff from the box and handed it to the Tavery twins. Then he jumped the lefthand ditch, graceful as a deer, and started up the arroyo track with Benny beside him. Frank and Francine were right behind; as Roland watched, Francine let a little hat fall from her hand.